John Ryan, actor, was born on July 30, 1936. He died of a stroke on March 20, 2007, aged 70

With an intense gaze that seemed to drill a hole in the back of the viewer’s head, John Ryan became a familiar face in American films in the 1970s.

Born in New York City in 1936, Ryan became interested in acting while studying English at university. After several years in the Army, he joined the Actors Studio in New York and impressed Jack Nicholson in a 1968 TV production of A Hatful of Rain. He played Nicholson’s father’s nurse in the 1970 anti-establishment drama Five Easy Pieces, and over the next two decades the two men made four more movies together.

He had a rare lead role in the horror film It’s Alive (1974), as the father of the homicidal baby; he was head of the space programme in The Right Stuff (1983), a cop who is after fugitive Richard Gere in Breathless (1983) and the warden on convict Jon Voight’s case in Runaway Train (1985).

Grenville Cottingham, artist, was born on April 16, 1943. He died of pneumonia on February 17, 2007, aged 63

Grenville Cottingham was the first seagoing artist tutor appointed by the director of the Marine Society. The post enabled him to travel more than 150,000 miles, recording ports and places as he went. His facility with oil and watercolour allowed him to overcome the challenges of each medium to make fresh and lively sketches which he would later develop into larger finished works without losing their spontaneity.

He also held part-time posts as senior tutor at Hornsey Art School (Middlesex University) and Sir John Cass College (London Guildhall University), but eventually devoted his time to commissions. These included work for P&O, the Royal Naval Reserve, Royal Fusiliers, Royal Artillery Woolwich and many financial institutions.

There are reproductions of his series of large oil paintings commissioned by Lord Stirling in the 1990s of the larger P&O passenger cruise liners, as well as many watercolours of the P&O passenger ferries. These are now held in the P&O collection.